It was Tuesday morning, I had gotten only about 45 minutes of sleep in a park, and now I was back in Whole Foods, this time eating breakfast: yogurt topped with granola and berries. My body had given up trying to sleep for the moment, and a warm sun poured through the window as I opened up my laptop and logged into Couchsurfing.com. I joined a group titled “Last-Minute Couches in Fort Collins” and wrote a quick note, without much hope, and weighed the pros and cons of getting a hotel room in my head.
Not five minutes later, someone had written me, saying, “We can host you!” She gave me her phone number, I called, and an hour later, I showed up on the doorstep of a cozy house tucked away in Fort Collin’s spring-budding neighborhoods. Two girls, Alicia and Rachel, and their roommates welcomed me with such warm generosity, I felt like I’d known them forever. The day was beautiful: sitting on the patio of a restaurant eating penne rosso and chatting, helping a friend move boxes into storage, buying my Greyhound ticket for the next day, basking in the sunlight, being treated to frozen yogurt, taking a nap, and helping make pasta for supper. I crashed at about 9:30 on their couch and slipped into a shallow sleep, as if my body still didn’t want to let down.
On Wednesday, my alarm went off at 4:30 so I could get to the Greyhound station in time. Alicia woke up especially to drive me there, and dropped me off in the deserted transit center. I plopped my backpack and purse down on the bench and began pacing, pulling up my hood against the wet coldness that was already soaking into my bones. I was half an hour early, so I passed time by listening to Coldplay and DC Talk.
When the bus was a full hour late, I began to wonder if it was coming at all. By this time, my fingers were frozen stiff and my toes were starting to go numb. My whole body felt cold, and my clothes were frigid, and I was damp from the drizzling rain that swept in under the overhang, and there was no good place to keep out of the wind. I tried some jumping jacks to get my blood moving, and promptly strained a muscle in my arm because it was so tight from the cold. Eventually, I gave up looking for the bus and began counting down the minutes until the transit center opened.
At last, 7:30 rolled around (I had been waiting for almost two and a half hours), and I stumbled inside, slapping my fingers to get them to thaw. When I asked the woman at the desk about the bus, she made a call, then informed me that the bus had already come and was now in Denver.
I would have been upset, but some measure of grace in me just took it in stride. She said my ticket would be good for the 4:35 bus this afternoon. And so I sat down on one of the black wire benches and tried to figure out what to do next. At last, I sheepishly called Alicia and asked if I could return to her place and sleep a bit more. She agreed, and I did, arriving back at around 9:30. She offered me her bed, and I was too tired to protest. I sunk into the warm, downy covers, and within minutes, I was asleep.
I swear, it was the most delicious sleep of my life. I came to the surface a few times, realized I didn’t have to wake up, and sunk down again. At last, I heard a knock on the door. It was Rachel. “What time does your bus leave?” she asked. “It’s 3:30.”
An hour and a half later, I was on the Greyhound, headed to Colorado Springs. I chatted with the guy next to me (he was on his way to El Paso), ate the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich that Rachel had packed for me, and wondered what my next couchsurfing host, Lisabet, would be like. After a brief layover in Denver, I was off to my final destination. I listened to music and gazed out the fog-stained window, crosshatched with raindrops.
Lisabet picked me up from the Greyhound station in Colorado Springs and took me to her house, which she shared with her roommate, Jocelyn. It was papered with art, music posters, stickers and flyers for different causes, maps, and random drawings that she had made of birds and flowers and monsters. A six-foot poster-paint mural, painted on the side of a cardboard box, adorned the wall over the corner of the livingroom where she’d set up my bed, Christmas lights were sprinkled throughout, and her roommate had a tie-die sarong instead of a door.
She made me mashed potatoes and salad, and then a couple of her friends came over— both professional chefs. The guy had an enthusiastic laugh and brought a copy of Peter Pan to read aloud, and the girl was more reserved, with a sweet smile and a gentle demeanor. We helped Lisabet make hummus (I washed dishes), drank the best herbal tea I’ve ever had, and made collage cards together. The focus and rhythm of making art was cathartic for me, and when midnight rolled around and her friends headed off, I was ready for bed. I curled up in the corner, turned on chill piano music, and drifted off to sleep, safe and warm.
~Lisa Shafter
Money spent the past two days: $55 (food and Greyhound ticket)
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